College students using software purchased with a student discount with digital verification.
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How Leading Software Companies Calculate the LTV of Their Student Programs

If you’ve been reading our recent posts on using student discounts to acquire long-term, full price customers, you already know that student seeding programs create exponential growth. Tableau, Lumion, and Intuit are just three of the leading software companies experiencing success with this strategy.

You also know the best way to monetize a program is to:

But maybe you’re still wondering what kind of returns your company would actually see. To help you determine that, we created the calculator below using the industry-standard formula. Just enter:

  1. The number of students you think will take advantage of your offer.
  2. The annual fee you’d collect if they were paying full price.
  3. How long you typically retain customers.

Then choose a conversion rate and see the lifetime value of your student seeding program.

You can adjust the variables to reflect different scenarios, but keep in mind that a recent survey by Deloitte found that college students have a 10-year customer lifecycle preference. And that companies using SheerID to verify their exclusive offers typically see conversion rates between 75% – 90%.

If the numbers are convincing but you want real world examples to show your team the value of having an exclusive offer to students,  tell them how Tableau’s exclusive offer of free software to students in 34 countries is leading to success stories like Michael Thurston’s. Michael’s experience with Tableau at Utah State University quickly landed him a job at Intermountain Healthcare, who said they hired him to do “exactly what you learned in school.”

And once you’ve put your program in place, follow the lead of Intuit, who ensures students will become long-term users by providing classroom resources to build their skills, and a certification program to make them more attractive job candidates.

SheerID’s Digital Verification Platform helps make these and many other student programs successful because it:

  • Can verify more than 137 million students in 106 countries.
  • Is localized in 36 languages.
  • Prevents fraudulent redemptions of your offer, which can be as high as 35%.
College student listening to streaming music service he purchased with a student discount.

Ready to Create a Powerful New Channel for Customer Acquisition?

Let’s talk about how SheerID can help you generate long-term customers from your student marketing program.

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